The Adventures of Captain Horn eBook

“I don’t believe,” said the minister’s
wife to her husband, when the bridal party had left,
“that you ever before married such a handsome
couple.”

“The fact is,” said he, “that I
never before saw standing together such a fine specimen
of a man and such a beautiful, glowing, radiant woman.”

“I don’t see why you need say that,”
said she, quickly. “You and I stood up
together.”

“Yes,” he replied, with a smile, “but
I wasn’t a spectator.”

CHAPTER LI

BANKER DOES SOME IMPORTANT BUSINESS

When Banker went back to the prison cell, he was still
firmly convinced that he had been overreached by his
former captain, Raminez; and, although he knew it
not, there were good reasons for his convictions.
Often had he noticed, in the Rackbirds’ camp,
a peculiar form of the eyebrows which surmounted the
slender, slightly aquiline nose of his chief.
Whenever Raminez was anxious, or beginning to be angered,
his brow would slightly knit, and the ends of his
eyebrows would approach each other, curling upward
and outward as they did so. This was an action
of the eyebrows which was peculiar to the Darcias of
Granada, from which family the professor’s father
had taken a wife, and had brought her to Paris.
A sister of this wife had afterwards married a Spanish
gentleman named Blanquote, whose second son, having
fallen into disgrace in Spain, had gone to America,
where he changed his name to Raminez, and performed
a number of discreditable deeds, among which was the
deception of several of his discreditable comrades
in regard to his family. They could not help
knowing that he came from Spain, and he made them
all believe that his real name was Raminez. There
had been three of them, besides Banker, who had made
it the object of their lives to wait for the opportunity
to obtain blackmail from his family, by threatened
declarations of his deeds.

This most eminent scoundrel, whose bones now lay at
the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, had inherited from
his grandfather that same trick of the eyebrows above
his thin and slightly aquiline nose which Banker had
observed upon the countenance of the professor in the
police station, and who had inherited it from the
same Spanish gentleman.

The next day Banker received a visitor. It was
Professor Barre. As this gentleman entered the
cell, followed by two guards, who remained near the
door, Banker looked up in amazement. He had expected
a message, but had not dreamed that he should see
the man himself.

“Captain,” he exclaimed, as he sprang
to his feet, “this is truly good of you.
I see you are the same old trump as ever, and do not
bear malice.” He spoke in Spanish, for
such had been the language in common use in camp.

The professor paid no attention to these words.
“I came here,” he said, “to demand
of you why you made that absurd and malicious charge
against me the other day. Such charges are not
passed over in France, but I will give you a chance
to explain yourself.”